tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683416399670371313Tue, 07 Oct 2014 04:19:16 +0000ReviewsContemporary Fiction18th Century20th Century FictionAmerican LiteratureMusings on FormRegional FictionShort Fiction19th CenturyMedium Length FictionTranslationMy Shelf Runneth OverThink of this place as a sand box for book lovers. Here, we can read the fiction we love and talk about it together. I open my shelf to you, and hope you will do the same, through public comments or e-mails. I want to share the stories I love and want to hear about new literary horizons to explore. Welcome.http://myshelfrunnethover.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Mille Feuille)Blogger42125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683416399670371313.post-132675575488993738Tue, 17 Jan 2012 15:24:00 +00002012-02-20T10:04:19.754-05:00Reflections:One Thousand White Women
To write an epic tale of the plains Indians in which the white men are the evil aggressors and the Indians the valiant victims would be so easy. Jim Fergus does not take that path when he tackles the topic in One Thousand White Women. Fergus's rendering of the dispute between settlers and natives shines because of his nuanced sense of the difference between immorality and amorality--and his http://myshelfrunnethover.blogspot.com/2012/01/reflectionsone-thousand-white-women.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mille Feuille)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683416399670371313.post-6976859274532902689Tue, 28 Jun 2011 22:22:00 +00002011-06-28T18:22:28.889-04:00Contemporary FictionReviewsReflections: A Suitable Boy<!--StartFragment-->
Call me Ishmael—or better, Ahab, for I have sought battle with a great, white whale. Some time ago I learned that of the 100 books that an Anglophone reader was most likely to have read, there were four I hadn’t. To be completely average, I would have to read A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. I blithely ordered this commonwealth novel (along with the other three titles), and http://myshelfrunnethover.blogspot.com/2011/06/reflections-suitable-boy.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mille Feuille)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683416399670371313.post-1953680328061862170Wed, 23 Mar 2011 17:19:00 +00002011-03-23T13:22:14.297-04:00Reflections: SlammerkinA young girl, seduced by a ribbon and the viciousness of a ribbon seller, transforms from a working class, charity-school girl to a hardened street walker in eighteenth-century England in Emma Donaghue's Slammerkin. The young girl, impregnated by the ribbon peddlar and consequently banished the home of her mother, develops a contradictory personality. She leeches onto women she meets and seeks http://myshelfrunnethover.blogspot.com/2011/03/reflections-slammerkin.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mille Feuille)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683416399670371313.post-5804398442230197056Tue, 25 Jan 2011 01:28:00 +00002011-02-24T11:45:46.034-05:0020th Century FictionReviewsReflections: The Madonnas of LeningradIt's rare I take the time to savor a stumbled upon book. With a list of To Be Read that rivals the Eiffel tower in height, I have to be choosy. I was seduced by the vivid cover and compactness of Debra Dean's The Madonnas of Leningrad, and I'm glad for it.
It is not, it must be pointed out, an amazing piece of literature by any common standard. It does, however, offer the quiet pleasure of the http://myshelfrunnethover.blogspot.com/2011/01/reflections-madonnas-of-leningrad.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mille Feuille)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683416399670371313.post-3218259214655485863Mon, 13 Dec 2010 02:26:00 +00002010-12-12T21:34:44.300-05:0020th Century FictionReviewsReflections: Ragtime
Thirty-five years after its publication, E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime still speaks to readers. It is on the list of "1001 Books You Must Read Before you Die" and was voted one of Time Magazine's best 100 books of the 20th century. Its tale about the American era between the turn of the century and the nation's entry into WWI weaves together concerns and beliefs very much in the fore of American http://myshelfrunnethover.blogspot.com/2010/12/reflections-ragtime.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mille Feuille)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683416399670371313.post-6116529516640508957Tue, 15 Jun 2010 12:05:00 +00002010-06-15T08:08:51.358-04:00Reflections: The HelpThere is something about Kathryn Stockett's The Help. This novel about the entanglement of racism and the expectations for cultured white women in the American South circa the mid twentieth-century has been on the New York Times Best Seller list for 62 weeks and counting. One cannot avoid an at least osmotic awareness of the title as it pops up so frequently in conversation and in the hands of http://myshelfrunnethover.blogspot.com/2010/06/reflections-help.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mille Feuille)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683416399670371313.post-668347334704023036Sun, 23 May 2010 16:19:00 +00002010-05-24T03:01:13.197-04:00Contemporary FictionReviewsReflections: The Learners
I was recently reminded just how many ways there are to enjoy fiction. I am a person who holds strong beliefs about what makes a novel a pleasant and worthwhile read. Judged by my code, Chip Kidd's The Learners would not have been at the top of the class. And yet.
I have rarely laughed so hard and so loud in my adult life--and in public too. No social inhibitions could forestall the audible http://myshelfrunnethover.blogspot.com/2010/05/reflections-learners.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mille Feuille)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683416399670371313.post-2077396553250230252Thu, 29 Apr 2010 19:58:00 +00002010-04-29T15:59:23.174-04:00Contemporary FictionReviewsReflections: Everything Matters!Novels that reach into experimental territory require an author with a certain talent for persuasion. Readers become accustomed to the norms of fiction and can resent being pushed from their old ways, no matter how good the cause. When I began Everything Matters (2009), by Ron Currie Jr., I felt the narrative Luddite in me raise its head. Why are these paragraphs numbered? How effective is this http://myshelfrunnethover.blogspot.com/2010/04/reflections-everything-matters.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mille Feuille)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683416399670371313.post-7316855593889925403Mon, 19 Apr 2010 02:05:00 +00002010-04-18T23:52:30.188-04:00Contemporary FictionReviewsReflections: The Bee Season
At the core of Myla Goldberg's Bee Season is the principle that true enlightenment means making your own choices despite the will of others. Young Eliza Naumann is an example of a new generation of Jewish Americans, the product of a father who broke with his secular and wholly assimilated family to become a Torah scholar and cantor. Eliza has no such deep connection to her roots, and this is thehttp://myshelfrunnethover.blogspot.com/2010/04/reflections-bee-season.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mille Feuille)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683416399670371313.post-6003799923095739844Fri, 26 Mar 2010 15:40:00 +00002010-04-16T11:54:33.714-04:00Contemporary FictionReviewsReflections: In the Country of Last ThingsPaul Auster's 1987 novella, In the Country of Last Things, shows the power that language can have to create whole new worlds for the reader to experience. Auster truly deserves the encomia heaped upon him, for he has mastered the art of prose fiction.
Our narrator, Anna Blume, has slipped across the border into an urban space that used to be like our own, but has experienced some inexplicable http://myshelfrunnethover.blogspot.com/2010/03/reflections-in-country-of-last-things.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mille Feuille)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683416399670371313.post-680560624838140059Sat, 20 Mar 2010 15:12:00 +00002010-03-27T11:14:09.447-04:00Contemporary FictionReviewsReflections: Chaos: A Novella and StoriesReading Edmund White's Chaos: A Novella and Stories means experiencing delicious doubt: is this fiction or fictionalized? That one cannot tell is a tribute to just how talented White is as an observer of character; the short narratives craft such full and believable characters that one cannot imagine how White could have created them out of whole cloth. Each of the four pieces reports the ornate http://myshelfrunnethover.blogspot.com/2010/03/reflections-chaos-novella-and-stories.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mille Feuille)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683416399670371313.post-3445898823932368542Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:02:00 +00002010-03-22T23:16:56.575-04:00Contemporary FictionReviewsReflections: The Children's Book
A narrative, a history lesson, a treatise on the material culture of Europe before WWI, a reflection on the various burdens of the woman's condition: A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book defies a basic generic descriptor. For whatever else it may be, it is a surprisingly long novel in the contemporary market, and quite an ambitious one at that.
The novel takes place in England, and spans the years http://myshelfrunnethover.blogspot.com/2010/03/reflections-childrens-book.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mille Feuille)4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683416399670371313.post-7975939965519961374Mon, 01 Mar 2010 02:13:00 +00002010-02-28T21:13:32.420-05:00Contemporary FictionReviewsReflections: The Echo MakerRichard Powers brings his audience another idea novel in The Echo Maker (2006). This "neuro-novel" plumbs the depths of a small handful of characters, seemingly to prove the point that all sense of self derives from the human brain's tendency to create a continuous and logical narrative about who we are and what we are doing in the world. In other words, Powers frets, biochemical impulses are allhttp://myshelfrunnethover.blogspot.com/2010/02/reflections-echo-maker.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mille Feuille)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683416399670371313.post-3046581032918813572Sun, 21 Feb 2010 23:46:00 +00002010-03-20T17:40:41.608-04:00Contemporary FictionReviewsReflections: Gentlemen of the Road
Michael Chabon knows narrative. He knows male/male friendship bonds. He knows modern American Jewish culture. In Gentlemen of the Road he brings them all together...again. As in The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Chabon has mixed together his essential ingredients to come up with a new and exciting recipe for the reader's delectation.
Gentlemen keeps its eyes upon two highwaymen of the http://myshelfrunnethover.blogspot.com/2010/02/reflections-gentlemen-of-road.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mille Feuille)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683416399670371313.post-8794555904481291763Tue, 16 Feb 2010 13:57:00 +00002010-02-17T22:46:59.087-05:00Contemporary FictionReviewsReflections: White NoiseDon Delillo's White Noise (1985) is, for all of its post-modern pretensions, a domestic novel. It begins with a father, satisfied in his career, watching benignly as other families--more kempt and wealthy than his own, yet familiar and appealing to him--descend onto his territory, the campus on the Hill. The story, such as it is, expresses the turmoils of its adult main characters, Jack and http://myshelfrunnethover.blogspot.com/2010/02/reflections-white-noise.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mille Feuille)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683416399670371313.post-7849957444404434294Sat, 13 Feb 2010 03:05:00 +00002010-02-12T22:05:15.972-05:00Contemporary FictionMedium Length FictionReviewsTranslationReflections: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress
Dai Sijie's novella Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress holds out the promise latent in all acclaimed and slender works of fiction. There is an excitement specific to contemporary medium length fiction, which causes hopes of spare, elegant, and often experimental prose to dance in one's head. Form aside, here is a romantic story of love and friendship in the midst of an important historicalhttp://myshelfrunnethover.blogspot.com/2010/02/reflections-balzac-and-little-chinese.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mille Feuille)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683416399670371313.post-5346240300393951088Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:45:00 +00002010-02-08T21:51:40.178-05:00Contemporary FictionReviewsReflections: Come Together, Fall Apart
Cristina Henriquez has been hailed as a writer to watch. Her 2006 collection of short fiction Come Together, Fall Apart brings to life both the Panama that existed on the eve of Noriega's capture and that which exists today.
What follows refers only to the novella "Come Together, Fall Apart" within the collection of the same name.
The reader of "Come Together, Fall Apart" experiences the http://myshelfrunnethover.blogspot.com/2010/02/reflections-come-together-fall-apart.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mille Feuille)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683416399670371313.post-1917986896157093123Mon, 08 Feb 2010 02:02:00 +00002010-02-08T21:20:15.561-05:0020th Century FictionAmerican LiteratureRegional FictionReviewsReflections: Death Comes for the Archbishop
Few novels manage to maintain the meditative rhythm throughout that Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop does. Bishop Jean Latour and his longtime companion and spiritual helpmeet Father Joseph Vaillant traverse the New Mexican territory in the wake of the Mexican war (1848) and, eventually, the Gadsden Purchase (1853). Latour and Vaillant commit their lives to serving a long neglectedhttp://myshelfrunnethover.blogspot.com/2010/02/reflections-death-comes-for-archbishop.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mille Feuille)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683416399670371313.post-7555568790021671403Sun, 07 Feb 2010 00:24:00 +00002010-02-06T19:55:24.547-05:0019th CenturyAmerican LiteratureRegional FictionReviewsReflections: The GrandissimesIn the years 1803 and 1804, Louisiana confronted a crisis of identity when its western portion, including New Orleans, became part of the United States through the Louisiana Purchase. In the months and years following the purchase, the region's citizens and slaves confronted a challenge to their social arrangements, rights, beliefs and traditions. A single question was on everyone's mind: could http://myshelfrunnethover.blogspot.com/2010/02/reflections-grandissimes.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mille Feuille)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683416399670371313.post-4183187666069835518Sat, 30 Jan 2010 19:17:00 +00002010-02-06T21:44:33.675-05:00Contemporary FictionReviewsReflections: The Body ArtistThe Body Artist (2001), by Don DeLillo, falls into the peculiar genre of the "short novel" alongside works like The Stranger and Of Mice and Men. Short novels beg to be considered on different terms than longer pieces; they are often engaged in a hyper-focused description of one particular event or experience. In a longer novel, this would be precious or over-bearing, but in short fiction it is ahttp://myshelfrunnethover.blogspot.com/2010/01/reflections-body-artist.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mille Feuille)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683416399670371313.post-817501822611017004Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:53:00 +00002010-01-30T23:13:50.918-05:00Contemporary FictionReviewsReflections: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and ClayMichael Chabon's novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is one for the ages. It's a rare novel that inhabits an impressive concept, brings painfully full characters to life, contributes well-crafted observations to the cultural vault, and entertains you with a gripping story throughout. This Chabon has effected with a style and grace that make the true lover of literary fiction ache http://myshelfrunnethover.blogspot.com/2010/01/reflections-amazing-adventures-of.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mille Feuille)4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683416399670371313.post-3612279291824279203Sun, 24 Jan 2010 00:09:00 +00002010-01-23T20:59:50.280-05:0020th Century FictionReviewsReflections: The Man Without Qualities
Considering Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities (1952, 1978) brings to mind the old schoolyard joke about how being forearmed/four armed is being half an octopus. The reader must allow me at least four arms, and their accompanying hands, to describe this epic novel. It is not a book whose theme one can state simply in a sentence or two.
It is, on one hand, a book about the conflict betweenhttp://myshelfrunnethover.blogspot.com/2010/01/reflections-man-without-qualities.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mille Feuille)8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683416399670371313.post-3524840881822966741Sun, 10 Jan 2010 00:37:00 +00002010-01-09T21:48:57.558-05:00Contemporary FictionReviewsReflections: Shroud
Samuel Johnson once crafted a simultaneously admiring and damning summation of the work of novelist Samuel Richardson with this statement: "[i]f you were to read Richardson for the story, your impatience would be so much fretted that you would hang yourself. But you must read him for the sentiment, and consider the story as only giving occasion to the sentiment." Replace "Richardson" with http://myshelfrunnethover.blogspot.com/2010/01/reflections-shroud.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mille Feuille)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683416399670371313.post-6359461003076027945Thu, 07 Jan 2010 01:45:00 +00002010-01-06T20:45:30.928-05:00Contemporary FictionReviewsReflections: Cloud Atlas
David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas must be acknowledged as a complex example of contemporary literary fiction. At moments the reader is bowled over by the impressive technical skill with which Mitchell creates multiple distinct worlds and languages with a sprezzatura that Castiglione would have envied and admired. At others, however, the bottom of the reading experience falls out, and the reader http://myshelfrunnethover.blogspot.com/2010/01/reflections-cloud-atlas.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mille Feuille)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683416399670371313.post-8410610136534535793Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:40:00 +00002010-01-05T20:07:02.018-05:00A Paen to the Book Blogging Community
Lovely Kim over at Chapter Chit Chat just tagged my blog in her "One Lovely Blog" list. This is another initiative on the part of creative book bloggers who value community; the award requires the awarded to then pass the honor along to other noteworthy blogs/bloggers. A win/win system, I must say.
Here are the rules:
1) Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the http://myshelfrunnethover.blogspot.com/2010/01/paen-to-book-blogging-community.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Mille Feuille)4